


Key

by merelypassingtime



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, I Blame Ebay oddly enough, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, locklock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 17:09:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13276041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merelypassingtime/pseuds/merelypassingtime
Summary: Sherlock has a lifelong fascination with keys that culminates in his first kiss with John





	Key

**Author's Note:**

> Extra thanks are owed to my lovely beta no-reason-at-all, who was willing to make multiple passes to try to improve this story.  
> Any errors and shortcomings that remain are my own. :")

It started out simply enough. 

When he had been four, a rainy, cold afternoon had forced him to stay inside. He tried to divert himself from the boredom that plagued him even then by pestering Mycroft, asking questions and demanding riddles. Finally, a frustrated Mycroft had handed him a small brass key and told him that it would unlock something somewhere in their huge summer estate. 

It had taken him hours to find the door that matched the key and when he finally did, his eagerness and excitement had made it hard to fit the key into the lock. The chocolate bar Mycroft left as his reward should have been a disappointment, but it wasn’t. The thrill of the pursuit and of uncovering a hidden treasure, no matter how prosaic, was all the reward he could want.

It became a regular game whenever Mycroft came home from boarding school; he would present a new key to Sherlock and set him loose. Keys to doors, to cabinets, to boxes. Keys to locked diaries and to padlocks hidden in the wood around their manor. Everytime Sherlock found the right lock, the quiet click of tumblers falling into place was his victory call.

Sometimes, he would turn his key and find a treat or a book, and sometimes Mycroft would leave a code to unravel or a clue to lead him further on in his chase. Once he had opened a jewelry box to find another key hidden under the felt lining the lid, and that had been the best prize he could imagine.

He loved the keys, loved the power they had to both expose things long forgotten and to hide inconvenient things away forever. He wanted to have that power too, wanted to unlock the most difficult puzzles and reveal great secrets and also wanted to be able to lock that knowledge away again so it would be his alone.

Then the summer after Mycroft graduated college he didn’t come home, and the keys stopped. Sherlock hid his disappointment even from himself, telling anyone who would listen that it had been a game for babies and that he was too mature and too clever for it anymore anyway. But when he saw a steel key, battered with age, in an antique shop Mummy dragged him to a few weeks later, he’d had to have it.

Thus began his collection of keys, all sorts of keys. He found them in shops and he bought them from online auction sites. He kept them from his rooms at boarding school and uni, and he found them laying in the street when he moved to London. He picked them from the pockets of orderlies when he was in rehab, and he stole them from crime scenes after he began assisting the Met.

By the time he moved into the rooms at Baker Street he had a banker’s box full of keys of all shapes and sizes, all of them waiting for him to find the right lock to make them useful again. As he bounced from case to case and cheap flat to downright hovel, he could sympathize with their need to find their purpose.

Then he met John Watson. 

Looking at the short, commanding man that day in the lab at St. Bart’s had been like finding a keyhole just the same shape and metal as the key in your hand. The next night, when John had pushed him up against the wall of the flat they now shared and kissed him with all the frenzy of their chase through London, he felt something open in his chest. Warmth, joy, and what could only be love flooded through him and he was helpless against its pull. All he could do was lace his fingers in John’s short hair and kiss him back.

In that blinding moment, he knew that he’d never been a key after all. All these years he had been a lock, fastened tight against the world and rusted shut from disuse. He had just never realized it until he had found the key he hadn’t even know he was looking for.


End file.
